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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday began reviewing new deportation cases, a move that increases the number of undocumented foreigners who could have their deportations suspended in accord with the new federal policy.

On Aug. 18, President Barack Obama announced a change in the application of the law that would mean a “case by case” review of the judicial proceedings of some 300,000 undocumented immigrants who are facing deportation, something that would allow many of them not only to remain in the United States, but also apply for work permits.

On Thursday, ICE began its own initiative, which had been announced in June, whereby its lawyers will begin reviewing the new cases that have made it to the 59 immigration courts.

The fact that new cases - and not only pending cases - will be reviewed implies that the policy change will affect more than the August estimate of 300,000 people, ICE officials confirmed to Efe.

The evaluation of the new cases will “reduce inefficiencies that delay the removal of criminal aliens and other priority cases by preventing new low priority cases from clogging the immigration court dockets,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

In this phase, which will last until Jan. 13, 2012, ICE attorneys will close the cases that are deemed to be of low priority.

At the same time, the cases of immigrants considered to be a danger to national security will be selected for expedited handling.

Closed cases resulting from the new process will be able to be reopened at any time, according to DHS. Thus, undocumented people will be able to remain in the country but they will also find themselves in legal limbo.

ICE on Thursday is also beginning a training phase for all its agents and lawyers whereby it intends to reduce the confusion that has arisen to date with regard to how to implement the new directive.

With regard to the pending cases, the agency on Dec. 4 will launch two pilot programs in which its attorneys will examine each of the cases that have made it to the Baltimore and Denver immigration courts.

Starting on Jan. 13, authorities will decide how to broaden the programs to immigration courts nationwide.

Although Obama’s announcement engendered high hopes among immigrants, so far it has been applied in only a few isolated cases, something that has disappointed many undocumented immigrants who had hoped to have their deportation orders rescinded.

Thus, the launching of a new phase and a new training program designed to coordinate the way in which agents in each state understand the policy satisfies many immigrants’ rights defense organizations.

“We welcome the launch of the Administration’s long-promised review designed to reduce the backlog of deportation cases and prioritize resources,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said in a statement.

In Fiscal Year 2011, the Obama administration deported almost 400,000 undocumented foreigners, a record. Of those, almost 55 percent were people with criminal records.

Seven of every 10 California Hispanics say that success in life depends on getting a university education, but the majority of Latino parents are concerned about the cost of their children’s college schooling.

According to the report “Californians and Higher Education,” released by the Public Policy Institute of California, 70 percent of state residents think that qualified and motivated students cannot enter a university because of the high tuition prices.

“Most Californians say budget cuts have hurt public colleges and universities a lot,” Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO, said. “Their concerns about where the system is headed are reflected in the low grades they give their leaders for handling higher education.”

Hispanics are the most positive about financial aid: 67 percent of them feel that there is available financial aid, compared with 61 percent of Asian Americans, 44 percent of blacks and 48 percent of whites.

However, 66 percent of Hispanic parents are “very concerned” about not being able to afford a university education for their children, higher than the state average of 52 percent and quite a bit higher than the 37 percent of whites who expressed such concerns.

The telephone survey was conducted among more than 2,500 California residents in different languages between Oct. 25 and Nov. 8 and has an error margin of +/- 3.1 percent.

A demobilized right-wing militiaman told Colombian prosecutors that a politician missing since October 2000 died after being thrown alive into a crocodile pit on the orders of a paramilitary commander, Caracol Radio said Thursday.

The fate of Pablo Vicente Perez was revealed by Alfredo Argel, who served in the Colombian army before joining one of the militias affiliated with the now-defunct AUC federation.

Around 30,000 AUC combatants laid down their arms under a pact that offers most of them relatively light punishment in exchange for full confessions to their role in the tens of thousands of deaths blamed on the militias.

Argel was asked about Pablo Perez while testifying Wednesday in the Caribbean city of Barranquilla.

The question was submitted by a brother of Perez who was watching the session via satellite link.

Pablo Perez, a political leader in the town of El Carmen de Bolivar, was last seen on Oct. 15, 2000, in the hands of members of Argel’s militia.

Perez’s brother fainted after hearing Argel describe how Pablo was fed to the crocodiles on a militia-owned farm in El Carmen, Caracol Radio said.

Argel suggested Pablo Perez’s murder was ordered by the man who was then in charge of the militia unit, Luis Francisco Robles.

Formed in the mid-1980s with the ostensible aim of protecting farmers and ranchers from leftist guerrillas, the AUC degenerated into a loose alliance of death squads whose commanders grew wealthy from drugs, extortion, cattle rustling and land seizures.

World Boxing Champion Iván “Iron Boy” Calderón is under investigation after a raid in a house he owns in the coastal city of Humacao turned up close to 500Lbs. of cocaine.

Police in Puerto Rico raided the home after a tip from “Cano” Navarro, a Narco arrested not too long ago in Miami. Navarro was accused of moving cocaine from the Dominican Republic to the U.S.

DEA Spokeswoman Laila Rico said officers found some 500lbs. of cocaine in the pugilist’s property, having an estimated value of over $4M.

Calderón issued a statement immediately after learning about the raid saying that though the house does belong to him, it is one of several homes the boxer rents out to third parties, and he had no idea of anything illegal happening on the property.

He said he rented the raided home to a young married couple, who always paid rent on time.

The parents of special needs student in New Jersey are shocked and angry after seeing a video of their son’s teacher bullying the student during class.

When Julio Artuz, 15, tried to tell people that he was being bullied by a teacher at Bankbridge Regional School in Gloucester County, NJ, no one believed him, not even his parents, and the bullying continued. But when he showed them a video he had recorded on his cell phone, they realized the truth.

In the recording, Artuz is heard telling the teacher not to call him ‘special’ anymore. The teacher, who is clearly angry and/or annoyed with the student yells back, and at one point gets alarming to close to him.

Artuz continuously tells the teacher, “Don’t call me that,” to which the teacher says, “You know what, Jules? I will kick your ass from here to kingdom come until I’m 80 years old.”

As the back-and-forth between student and teach continues, Artuz says, “Don’t threaten me.”

The teacher, with his hands out to the side and his chest sticking out asks, “What are you going to do? What are you going to do? You gonna get a chopper and chop me?”

Artuz is part of the special education program provided by in Gloucester County Special Services School District, and the teacher in the video is supposed to be a special education teacher.

When Philadelphia’s NBC affiliate asked the school district about the accusations, a statement from the district read, “The actions depicted on the video do not reflect the mission or culture of our school,” and added that the teacher was put on administrative leave while the investigation continues.

During an interview with NBC, Turiz told the interviewer, the teacher made him feel like “trash”.

When asked about the bullying by the Athens Banner-Herald, Clark Country Superintendent of Schools Philip Lanoue said the teacher’s action violate school policy.

“This incident is counter to our philosophy and how we work with kids, and we will not tolerate it. Swift action will always be taken if there are any issues like this in our district.”

Thousands of hungry piranhas have infested the popular Daveron beach in west Brazil’s Paraguay river; 15 people have reportedly been bitten in the past two weeks.

Authorities in the city of Cáceres, in the western Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, indicated that the river has always had piranhas. What is different this time is that, this is the first time schools of piranhas have become a threat for swimmers.

Among the fifteen victims of piranha bites, there was a 22-year-old, who discovered while still in the water, he had lost the tip of one of his toes to a hungry fish.

City officials have decided to not close the beach, as it is a very popular tourist destination. Therefore, banners alerting swimmers of the piranhas have been posted and authorities recommend using common sense when swimming, and if bit, to exit the water quickly and carefully before blood spreads.

Pennsylvania legislators have proposed a bill that would punish employers for hiring undocumented immigrant workers.

Just four years after the controversial Mayor of Hazelton, PA and the town council passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which fined landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has passed a bill that would revoke professional licenses issued by the Bureau of Occupational and Professional Affairs from those who employ undocumented workers.

Though the bill still has to pass in the Senate, Pennsylvania appears to be on its way to enacting anti-illegal immigration laws like Arizona and Alabama before them.

In 2007, a federal judge declared that parts of the Hazelton ordinance was unconstitutional, and after review in 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit most of the judge’s injunction was upheld.

YouTube has introduced its first original channel and it happens to be Latino targeted and in Spanish from Clevver Media.

The original channel is a Latino entertainment news channel, ClevverTeVe and is the first of 96 YouTube partners offering original content. The Clevver channel videos will range from 60 to 75 seconds and expects to offer 60 new videos a week.

Co-founder Jorge Maldonado added, “The YouTube original channels initiative will also enable us to expand our international reach. Our new ClevverTeVe channel is designed to tap into the rapidly growing Latino market, hungry for high quality and up-to-date entertainment news content.”

According to this year’s edition of the FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics report, nearly 67 percent of victims of ethnicity-based hate crimes in 2010 were Hispanic.

Of the 1,122 hate crime victims reported to the FBI in 2010, 747 of them (66.6 percent) were Hispanic. The remaining victims were split between all other ethnicities. In 2009, only 45 percent of the ethnic-bias hate crimes were against Hispanic victims.

While the majority of ethnic-bias hate crimes were against Hispanics, overall the most victimized groups in 2010 were African-Americans and those of the Jewish faith.

Though the reason for the increase in anti-Latino hate crimes is not definitively known, the release of the FBI report comes at a time when anti-illegal immigration legislation is spreading to a number of states.

“Almost a fourth of our 2010 civil rights caseload involved crimes motivated by a particular bias against the victim,” said Eric Thomas, our civil rights chief in Washington, D.C., “and we frequently worked these cases with state and local law enforcement to ensure that justice was done—whether at the state level or at the federal level.”

A former lawful permanent resident, who was once an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy, was deported Wednesday to Panama. He had killed two people during a 1977 hostage standoff at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The man was escorted from Buffalo, N.Y., to Panama by officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

On Nov. 14, 2011, Luis Robinson, 61, a Panamanian national formerly of Somerset, N.J., was arrested and placed into ERO custody after being paroled from the New York State Department of Corrections. Robinson served 34 years in prison for two counts of 2nd degree murder.

According to court documents, on July 4, 1977, Robinson commandeered a 47-foot Vermont Transit Lines bus that originated in Manhattan and was bound for Hartford, Conn., Springfield, Mass., and Burlington and White River Junction, Vt. As the bus traveled through the Bronx in New York, Robinson hijacked the bus, and shot one individual. Robinson then ordered the driver to take him to Kennedy Airport. He then ordered the driver to crash through a padlocked security gate to gain access to the airport tarmac. Airport officials immediately suspended operations, as the bus stopped near a Trans World Airlines terminal. Previous media reporting said the airport closure snarled Independence Day travels plans for an estimated 15,000 travelers.

When cornered and confronted by law enforcement, Robinson killed a hostage and threw her body out on the tarmac. While Robinson’s back was facing the bus driver, the bus driver attempted to disarm Robinson. Robinson then killed the bus driver and dumped his body on the tarmac.

Once contacted by negotiators, Robinson demanded a $6 million ransom and a DC-8 aircraft to take him to Cuba. During the nine-hour hostage standoff at the airport, Robinson wounded one more hostage before releasing the remaining hostages and surrendering. He was immediately taken into custody by the New York City Police Department. In total, two individuals were shot to death and three others were injured by Robinson.

On Sept. 6, 1978, Robinson pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 15-years-to-life in prison.

Robinson entered the United States June 12, 1964, in the New York-area as a lawful permanent resident. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy on June 24, 1976. During the time of the hostage situation, he was a USS Detroit apprentice seaman, and was due back to the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, on July 4, 1977.

He was discharged from the U.S. Navy in absentia on July 7, 1980. On April 1, 1999, a U.S. immigration judge revoked his lawful permanent resident status and ordered him removed from the United States at the completion of his criminal sentence.

The pair became internet celebrities after Jorge began uploading videos of him and his daughter Alexa singing while he played the guitar. Loving the heartfelt belting of little Alexa, viewers quickly shared the videos, which ultimately caught the eyes of those at Hyundai.

Though now a pseudo-celebrity, Jorge remains just a single father trying to do right by his daughters Alexa and Eliana, 3, while attending college and continuing to play music.

Though most 12-year-olds love playing videogames, Thomas Suarez taught himself how to create them, and was even a speaker at a TEDx event.

In 1984, TED started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Today, it holds true to their slogan: Ideas Worth Sharing with young entrepreneurs like Suarez.

After developing iPhone apps like “Bustin Jeiber,” a whack-a-mole game, Suarez is now using his skills to help other kids become developers.

At the TED conference this year, Suarez spoke to his audience about tech integration in education, providing app access to all children, and about how teachers can enhance their lessons by actually looking to their students for better way to engage them.

His interest in technology and programming led him to learn the programming languages Python, Java, and C “just to get the basics down.” He built an app and then coaxed his parents into paying the $99 fee to get the app which he called “Earth Fortune” in the app store. Thomas also started an app club at school to help other kids build and share their creations, saying, “[If you want to learn to play] soccer, you could go to a soccer team. For violin, you could get lessons for a violin, but what if you want to make an app?”

And at the age of 12, Thomas Suarez is now starting his own company, CarrotCorp.

Investigators on the multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force continued sifting through evidence at a warehouse in Otay Mesa’s industrial park housing the U.S. entrance to a sophisticated passageway that runs beneath the border to a warehouse more than 400 yards away in Tijuana, Mexico.

Authorities confirmed the existence of the tunnel Tuesday evening after obtaining a federal warrant to search the warehouse located at 8851 Kerns Street, near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. Inside the nondescript white building, investigators discovered the entrance to the passageway. From the warehouse floor, the tunnel plunges more than 20 feet to the bottom of the shaft. The passageway, measuring approximately four feet by three feet, is equipped with structural supports, electricity and ventilation. Evidence found inside the warehouse leads investigators to believe the tunnel was only recently completed.

The Tunnel Task Force recently began conducting surveillance on the Otay Mesa warehouse after observing possible suspicious activity at the site. Tuesday afternoon, agents spotted a small cargo truck leaving the facility. Officers with the California Highway Patrol subsequently pulled the truck over on highway 125 near the warehouse. Inside the trailer, officers discovered approximately three tons of marijuana packed in boxes. The male driver and a male passenger were taken into custody at the scene and are facing federal drug charges.

Based upon the results of the vehicle stop, agents obtained a warrant to enter the warehouse, where they recovered approximately 6 1/2 additional tons of marijuana. Meanwhile, Task Force officers alerted authorities in Mexico, who made entry into the Tijuana warehouse, resulting in the seizure of another five to six tons of marijuana.

n the last four years, federal authorities have detected more than 75 cross-border smuggling tunnels, most of them in California and Arizona. The passageway uncovered Tuesday is the sixth large-scale drug smuggling tunnel discovered in the San Diego since 2006.

They were the fourth Mexican-Spanish pair of recipients of this annual prize conferred in conjunction with the Es.cine festival of Spanish and Latin American cinema, which will get underway Nov. 24 in the Mexican capital.

This year’s honor was awarded in private and coincided with the actors’ visit to Mexico City to present their new animated film “Puss in Boots.”

The objective of the award is to “symbolize, through Buñuel’s name, someone who has spent his or her life between Mexico and Spain,” Rubio told Efe Wednesday, adding that “there can be no better ambassadors than Banderas and Hayek.”

“Antonio told me yesterday that he owes part of his career to Mexico and was very moved” to receive a prize bearing the late surrealist filmmaker’s name, Rubio said.

“Salma is the most recognizable figure in Mexico and she has taken our country to every corner of the world,” he added.

The Mexican actress said she felt “very honored” to be awarded the prize and to be “included in a group of artists” she respects and admires, festival organizers said in a statement.

Banderas, for his part, said it is “a great honor” to receive an award that bears the name of a person he admires and who, like him, “spent his life between two continents.”

Buñuel was born in Spain but went into exile after the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War and later became a naturalized citizen of Mexico.

The previous recipients of the award are Silvia Pinal and Carlos Saura, Maribel Verdu and Daniel Gimenez Cacho and Julio Medem and Pedro Armendariz.

Some of the most successful Spanish films of last year, including “Pa negre” (Black Bread) and “La piel que habito” (The Skin I Live In), will be screened during the week-long Es.cine festival.

The “Baywatch” actress is set to play the Virgin Mary in “A Russell Peters Christmas,” a Canadian sketch comedy version of the Nativity story, set to air Dec 1st.

A Russell Peters Christmas Special will feature a mix of stand-up and sketch comedy, stop-motion animation and musical performances; stars Michael Bublé, Ted Lange (The Love Boat), Saturday Night Live vets Jon Lovitz and ‘The Kids In the Hall’ Scott Thompson will also make appereances.

Bennetton’s new ad campaign featuring world leaders with opposing views locking lips, has been raising many eyebrows. The Fashion brand says the campaign—“UNHATE” is “about reconciliation and acceptance.”

“We want to reaffirm the value of the brand. We are going back to the tradition of [Benetton] and will make the most of this. But we are reconciling the past with the future. At this time, when something bad is happening in the world, we want to focus people’s eyes on the positives. This campaign is about reconciliation and acceptance,” said Alessandro Benetton, to The Independent Newspaper.